Quotessence
Home / Authors / John Cage
John Cage

John Cage Quotes

Composer

Filter quotes by topic

AllSoundMusicIfsArtPeopleMusic IsHappensNeedsSaidThinkingIdeasMindTryingTwoWayWritingKnowsSilenceWorldArtist

Famous John Cage Quotes

“I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment.”

ThinkingWayMeanIdeasDoneSoundKnowingEnvironmentImagineGoes OnDetailsContemporaryAbstractImagine ThatContemporary MusicKnowing More
Author:John Cage
Create image

“When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic - here on Sixth Avenue, for instance - I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound... I don’t need sound to talk to me.”

NeedsIdeasFeelingsSeemsSoundActingTalkingActivityInstanceTrafficAvenuesTalk To Me
Author:John Cage
Create image